It is well known that Artificial Intelligence provides great support in the collection, sifting and interpretation of data. But these capabilities, to which is added the visualization of the processing in graphical form to make them even more understandable, may not be enough. Because the distance between declaring you want to be a data driven company and actually being one still seems long.
There is evidence that the topic of understanding data is particularly important. As data processed in the right platforms is transformed into insight sets that impact application and decision-making processes, ranking above the myriad of data container platforms that cut across processes and departments.
Indeed, the Salesforce Untapped Data Research survey involving 10,000 business managers revealed that 73% of those interviewed are aware that data analysis helps reduce uncertainty and achieve better results in business relationships. The problem is that 67% of the managers questioned still do not correctly exploit the data generated by business applications, for example in adapting price lists to economic conditions. Still, just 29% of managers use data to study new product launch strategies. So there is a problem, companies would like to be data driven but there is something holding them back.
Tableau has been transmitting data culture for 20 years
Meeting this challenge is up to Tableau, which provides a recognized leading application platform in data analysis and interpretation. “Tableau’s mission has always been to help people (and companies) see and understand data in order to have actionable insights – says Stefano Maio, Tableau Country Leader for Italy at Salesforce – and for 20 years we have been committed to transmitting data culture. We continue to do so by committing ourselves to transfer it to 10 million people in 5 years – continues the manager – also thanks to the support of our communities, the largest community group on the planet for solutions of this type. And we do it through a technological platform recognized as a leader, among others also by Gartner, today committed to reducing the information gap, bringing data and insights closer to those who would never go to look at a dashboard, thanks to generative AI and new solutions. We recently presented in Milan all the new products announced last May in Las Vegas, which will be available on the Italian market very soon. The 5 Italian user groups were with us, as were our partners who brought the experiences of Euronext Securities Milan, Safilo and Sky to the stage”.
Thus, Tableau introduces Tableau GPT, integrating new generative Artificial Intelligence tools to further simplify the collection, transformation and analysis of data. “The introduction of generative AI – says Stefano Oddone, Solution Engineering Director Tableau Italy & Iberia of Salesforce – will further help the interpretation of data by those who have difficulty extricating themselves from the dashboards and reports from which they must draw insights” .
The announced news can be summarized in three main lines and Tableau GPT is the first; is a technological layer of AI that provides support to all phases of the analytical process and Tableau Pulse is the new paradigm that adds the visualization of insights in a conversational way to the Tableau engine, allowing users to ask questions directly from a minimalistic and simple interface (the prompt) and making the answers totally conversational. What does this mean in practice? That users will interact with the platform in natural language, receiving answers in text and graphic format.
Tableau Pulse also takes advantage of the typical characteristics of generative Artificial Intelligence to suggest to users which additional questions they might be interested in based on the context, the available data and the previous “interviews” they had with the solution. By integrating with collaboration tools like Slack and email, users can interact and input this information directly into their workflow.
Pay close attention to data sources
“It is important to underline – adds Oddone – that Tableau GPT pays the utmost attention to data sources, guaranteeing accuracy and objectivity with a verification of the bias at the platform level. In summary, Tableau GPT is designed to be hallucination-free.” The clarification is essential precisely to guarantee a model that draws on certain and guaranteed internal and external data of the company, and which in addition are free from criticisms on the subjective interpretation that the engine can give to the questions posed by the user.
Another line of innovation is that relating to Data Monetization and the ability to insert data analysis into custom or third-party applications. For several years Tableau has been offering features that allow the Embedding of one’s own analyses, the novelties concern the simplification of this activity, the possibility of dragging and dropping code constructs instead of remembering the syntax of the various instructions by heart, with an evident advantage in terms of speed and quality in the work of developers. At the Italian event presenting the latest Tableau news, Euronext Securities Milan, Safilo and Sky Italia demonstrated different methods of using analytics solutions. In particular, the client Euronext Securities Milan showed how, thanks to Tableau Embedded Analytics, it has integrated the data analyzes carried out with Tableau in the services made available to their clients.
“Embedding is now much easier – observes the manager – thanks to the strong simplification of writing the integration code via API through the Tableau Embedding Playground tool”.
Finally, the third novelty concerns the integration between Tableau and Salesforce Data Cloud, the company data collection and management platform in real time. Tableau is able to collect and analyze the data present in Salesforce Data Cloud and make them viewable and immediately understandable to end users thanks to the features that make Tableau the most popular data visualization platform.